A petitioner in the Adani-Hindenburg case in the Supreme Court has filed an affidavit accusing the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) of concealing an alert it received from the Directorate of Revenue Intelligence (DRI) about stock market manipulation by the Adani group in 2014.

According to the affidavit filed by Anamika Jaiswal, represented by advocates Prashant Bhushan and Cheryl D’Souza, SEBI had concealed a January 2014 DRI alert about Adani having siphoned off money and invested them in Adani listed companies through entities based in Dubai and Mauritius.

The affidavit claims that the DRI sent a letter to the then SEBI chairperson, UK Sinha, on January 31, 2014, alerting about possible stock market manipulation by the Adani group. The letter mentioned that Adani had siphoned off money through overvaluation in the import of power equipment and was under investigation by the DRI. The accompanying CD contained evidence of ₹2,323 crores being siphoned off and further documents were available at the Mumbai zonal unit of the DRI.

The petitioner alleges that instead of acting on the DRI letter, UK Sinha closed the ongoing investigations into the Adani group. This suppression of facts and provision of false information amounts to perjury, according to the affidavit.

The affidavit also states that SEBI had informed the Supreme Court-appointed Justice AM Sapre committee that the investigation into Adani had only started on October 23, 2020, after receiving complaints in June-July 2020.

It is noteworthy that UK Sinha, the former SEBI chairperson, currently serves as the ‘non-executive independent director-chairperson’ of NDTV, a media company that was acquired by the Adani group in 2022.